Five Mistakes that Will Stymie Your Career Progress - Slide 5

Trying to do it all by yourself

By definition, succeeding at the executive level involves managing others to achieve results. Some managers fail to learn to delegate and, as a result, get sucked into managing implementation at too low a level of detail. Successful managers know how to build and nurture a successful team. Without a skilled team, it becomes impossible to devote time to executive-level activities like strategic thinking, managing innovation and change and working with peers to get things done across organizational boundaries.

"Interacting with customers and other external groups, carving out time for strategic thinking, identifying the next big breakthrough, influencing and persuading peers across the company — all of these things take time, and a strong team allows you to focus on them," said Mr. Beeson. "To build this management strength, an aspiring executive should create and implement a plan to continuously upgrade talent within the team and motivate and develop people through challenging assignments."

"As much as companies say they want to develop future leadership talent, most do a poor job of specifying the requirements for advancement. As a result, many managers operate under false assumptions about what's needed to get ahead," said John Beeson, succession planning and organizational development expert and author of The Unwritten Rules: The Six Skills You Need to Get Promoted to the Executive Level (Jossey-Bass, 2010). "In this environment, those who leapfrog to a higher level realize that they need to tease out deeper feedback and make adjustments not only to how they approach their work but also how they display their skills to key decision makers."

This slideshow highlights the five executive promotion killers identified by Beeson.

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